Railroad Tycoon 3 Demo
Readme File - 21 October 2003
Version 1.01

       TABLE OF CONTENTS

       1. Installation
       2. Starting Railroad Tycoon 3
       3. System Requirements
       4. Troubleshooting – General Steps
       5. Troubleshooting – Specific Issues 
A. Flickery/Missing Mouse Cursor
B. Flickering Graphics (Other than Mouse Cursor)
C. Graphics too dark (At night or otherwise)
D. Trains are invisible some of the time.
E. Problems when MSN/AIM messages and/or e-mail arrive
F. ATI Radeon – Blurriness, Glowing Building Fringes
G. ATI Rage Fury Maxx
H. 3DFX Voodoo cards
I.  S3 Savage 2000 cards
J.  Sound Skips/Stutters
K. Error – ‘A required .DLL file, D3D8.DLL was not found’
       6. Performance
       
        

(1) INSTALLATION
Run the supplied setup program (which should normally be labeled
‘RT3_Demo.EXE’.

The Railroad Tycoon 3 Demo also requires Direct X 8.1 or higher, which is not
provided as a part of the Setup program.  If you've installed any newer game
(from 2002 onward), you likely already have this installed.  If you do not have
Direct X 8.1 or 9 installed, you may download and install the latest version
from www.microsoft.com/DirectX.  If you run the game and receive the error
message ‘A required .DLL file, D3D8.DLL was not found’, that means you’ll need
to download and install the latest version of Direct X.



(2) STARTING RAILROAD TYCOON 3
Click on the shortcut installed to your desktop, or click on the Windows
'Start' Button in the bottom left corner of the screen, then select 'Programs',
'Play Railroad Tycoon 3 Demo', then select the 'Railroad Tycoon 3 Demo' item.

No manual or on-line documentation is provided with this demo.  We suggest you
play through the tutorial (the first option within the game), to learn the
basics.  The full game comes with a thorough, printed manual, as well as
printed charts of locomotives and industries.


(3) SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
OS:                 Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
CPU:                400 MHz
RAM:                128 MB
Video Card:         16 MB 3D
Disk Space:         1.2 GB
Other:              4X CD-ROM, Mouse and Keyboard, DirectX compatible Sound
card
       with speakers/headphones recommended       

Railroad Tycoon 3 has been successfully tested with the following video card
chipsets/families:

NVidia:           GeForce (all versions), TNT 1 and 2, NForce
ATI:               Radeon (all versions), Rage 128, Rage Pro, Rage Fury Maxx
Intel:                    810, 845, 865 (a.k.a. 'Intel Extreme' and 'Intel 3D
Direct' graphics)
S3:                ProSavage, S4 Savage, Savage 2000 (See Troubleshooting – 5
I)
SiS:               300/305/650/651/740
Matrox:           Parhelia, G400/450/550
PowerVR:          Kyro I and II
3DFX:             Voodoo 3, Banshee, Voodoo 5 5500 (See Troubleshooting – 5 H)
3Dlabs:         Oxygen VX1/Glint R3
Trident:                Blade T16

Note: Even if your chipset is not on the above list, it should work, provided
you have current drivers (Direct X 8.1 or above) for it.



(4) TROUBLESHOOTING – GENERAL STEPS
If you can't run the game, we recommend the following steps:

A.      Reboot your computer and try again.  An old solution, but still a good
one...

B.      Try launching the game in 'safe mode'.  Click on your Windows Start
button, then click 'Programs', 'Railroad Tycoon 3', 'Troubleshooting', 'RT3
(Safe Mode - Windowed)' .  You can also try the other versions of safe mode, if
you think your sound card may be causing the problem. 

C.      Update your video card driver.

If you're unsure what video chipset you have, we recommend running the 'CPU
Info' tool.  A shortcut to this tool can be found in the 'Start' menu, under
'Programs', 'Railroad Tycoon 3', 'Troubleshooting'

Then, go to the appropriate video chipset web page to download the latest
drivers. They all have a button on the main page for 'support' or 'downloads'.
Follow that to get and install the latest drivers.

   The major vendor's sites are:

   NVidia:           www.nvidia.com
   ATI:             www.ati.com
   Intel:            www.intel.com
   S3:               www.s3graphics.com
   SiS:              www.sis.com
   Matrox:           www.matrox.com
   PowerVR:          www.powervr.com
   3DFX:            www.voodoofiles.com


D.      Update your video card/chipset BIOS.  (This is the actual chip that
display graphics.  This is usually NOT necessary if you have a physical 3D card
by ATI or NVidia, but often IS necessary if you have an on-motherboard
integrated chipset, such as the Intel Extreme 3D chipset.  Again, go to the
manufacturer's site and look for a BIOS update patch.

E.      Verify that Direct3D acceleration is enabled and working correctly.
Click on the Windows 'Start' button, then click on 'Run', then type dxdiag, and
then click 'OK'.  Click on the 'Display' tab and verify that all Direct X
features are enabled and working properly. 

F.      Check for a patch for the Railroad Tycoon 3 game itself.  Go to
www.gathering.com, and select the 'Downloads' tab to see if a patch is
available.

G.      On a multiple monitor system, it is recommended that you run Railroad
Tycoon 3 on the primary display.

H.      If you’re experiencing problems on a Windows 2000 machine and you’ve
already updated your video drivers, download and install the Windows 2000
Service Pack version 2 or later.

I.      If the game won’t run at all, or crashes quickly within the game world,
it is possible that you have the wrong AGP aperture setting for your video
card.  This problem will generally show up in any modern, high-end 3D game if
your system has an add-in 3D video card  that is configured wrong.  To verify,
test another modern 3D game on your machine and see if it has similar problems
– if multiple 3D games crash or don’t work, you may have this problem.   If so,
talk to your PC maker or 3D video card maker’s tech support people for
instructions in how to set your computer’s AGP aperture correctly.


(5) TROUBLESHOOTING – SPECIFIC ISSUES
See below for solutions to specific problems with graphics and other issues

A.      Flickery/Missing Mouse Cursor:  If your mouse cursor flickers, or is
not visible at all, press the ~ (tilde) key (upper left corner of your
keyboard).  You can also launch the game in safe mode (which will give you a
black and white mouse cursor).  Full mouse cursor options can be seen in the
Settings window, Graphics section.

B.      Flickering Graphics (Other than Mouse Cursor) – If objects in the game
world appear to flicker, try these steps:
* Make sure no other applications are running.  Other applications, especially
multimedia applications, may cause Railroad Tycoon 3 to flicker, and could also
decrease stability.
* Reduce your graphics overall settings.  Press <F6>, then lower 'Visual
Detail' down one or more notches.
* Try running the game in windowed mode.  Press <F9> to toggle to windowed
mode.  In particular, this resolves problems seen with Voodoo 5 5500s
* Again, ensure you have the latest BIOS and drivers for your video card.  In
particular, a BIOS update has been known to resolve flickering on Matrox
Parhelia cards.

C.      Graphics too dark (At night or otherwise) – If you're playing the game
in a dark room or with a relatively dim monitor, the graphics may appear too
dark and hard to see, especially at night or during storms.  You can mitigate
this problem in several ways:
*       Increase the 'Gamma' setting.  This option is only available when
playing the game full-screen.  Press <F6> to bring up the settings window, then
select and expand the 'Graphics' item, then select the 'Miscellaneous' item,
then slide the Gamma slider to a higher value.
*??????Brighter Nights.  To increase the brightness of the world at night and
during storms, press <F6> to bring up the settings window, and under the
'Graphics' option, enable 'Brighter Nights'
*??????Adjust your monitor or room conditions.  If changing the in-game options
does not produce a satisfactory result, you can also increase the brightness
setting on your monitor (most monitors have this option), or you can reduce the
lights in the room where you're playing the game.

D.      Trains are invisible some of the time.  When trains are waiting for
something (loading/unloading cargo, at a service tower, waiting for another
train to pass on the tracks), they should become translucent.  The SiS
integrated video chipsets, as well as a few older video cards (Notably the
PowerVR Kyro 1/2) don’t support translucency, and the trains may be fully
transparent (i.e. not visible).  To resolve this, press <F6> for the settings
window, and, under ‘Gameplay’, check off ‘Use Gray For Inactive Trains’ – the
trains will be gray instead of translucent/transparent.  Even on modern video
cards, when multiple translucent trains are in the same area, it can cause
minor flickering – if you prefer, enable the gray trains rather than
translucent trains

E.      Problems when ‘pop up’ messages and/or e-mail arrive.  If you are
running RT3 full screen, you may experience interruptions if you have other
applications running on your machine, including instant-messaging programs,
e-mail programs and other applications that pop-up windows when something
occurs or arrives.  These applications may cause Windows to try to shift focus
away from the game and to themselves.  Generally, this is distracting but no
worse.  However, depending on the application in question, your version of
Windows and other factors, you may be unable to return to the game correctly.
In general, and especially if you have these problems, we recommend closing
such applications before launching RT3.  If you must run these other programs,
consider running RT3 in windowed mode, which is much more conducive to
switching between multiple applications.  To do so, press <F6> for the settings
window, then, in the ‘Graphics’ tab, uncheck the ‘Full Screen’ checkbox.

F.      ATI Radeon – Blurriness, Glowing Building Fringes.  If improperly
configured, ATI Radeon cards (especially the 9000 and above models) can
experience the following visual glitches:  Fringes of buildings and cars glow
at night.  Grid mode (press 'G' key to toggle) produces only a fuzzy unusable
grid.  When placing or hovering over stations, the glowing 'radius of effect'
has blurry, hard to discern images.  All of the aforementioned symptoms are
caused when the driver ignores RT3's bilinear/anisotropic filtering preference.
 To resolve, do the following:  At your windows desktop (NOT inside of the RT3
game), right-click on an open area of the desktop.  Choose 'Properties', then
click on the 'Settings' tab, then choose 'Advanced'.  Click on the 'Direct3D'
tab (if you do not see a 'Direct 3D' tab, then you'll need to install the ATI
control panel, normally found on the disk that came with your video card, and
also downloadable at www.ati.com).  With the 'Direct3D' tab selected, you
should see a box labeled 'Anisotropic Filtering'.  Check this box, so that the
application (i.e. Railroad Tycoon 3) can control this setting.  Railroad Tycoon
3 uses filtering for some operations, but turns it off for others.

G.      ATI Rage Fury Maxx.  No drivers are available for this card for Windows
XP or 2000, that we know of.  In Windows 98/ME, this card only runs the game in
'Windowed' mode.  To launch RT3 in windowed mode, press 'Start' – 'Railroad
Tycoon 3' – 'Troubleshooting' – 'Safe Mode, windowed, with sound'.

H.      3DFX Voodoo cards.  These cards are now quite old and the manufacturer
is out of business.  Nonetheless, RT3 can run on Voodoo 3 and 5 cards.  Please
get the latest drivers via Windows Update (if you’re running Windows XP) of
from www.voodoofiles.com.  If you have difficulty running the game, or
experience flickering or other problems while running, you may want to run in
windowed mode (launch the game by pressing 'Start' – 'Railroad Tycoon 3' –
'Troubleshooting' – 'Safe Mode, windowed, with sound'.)

I.      S3 Savage 2000 cards.  If you experience flickering on this card, you
may want to run in windowed mode (launch the game by pressing 'Start' –
'Railroad Tycoon 3' – 'Troubleshooting' – 'Safe Mode, windowed, with sound'.)

J. Sound Skips/Stutters.  Although sound problems are less common than video
problems, they can occur.  Make sure you have the latest sound drivers.  If the
problem persists, open the 'Settings' window in Railroad Tycoon 3 (press <F6>
in the game), click on 'Sound', and try changing the 3D Sound Provider to
either 'DirectSound3D Software Emulation' or ‘RAD Game Tools RSX 3D Audio’.  If
that doesn’t work, try this: Click on the Windows 'Start' button, then click on
'Run', then type dxdiag, and then click 'OK'.  Click on the 'Sound' tab and
lower the ‘Hardware Sound Acceleration Level’ slider all the way to the left
(disabling sound acceleration).

K. Error – ‘A required .DLL file, D3D8.DLL was not found’ appears when trying
to launch the game. This means you need to install the latest version of
Microsoft’s Direct X.  Download and install the latest version from
www.microsoft.com/DirectX


(6) PERFORMANCE
If the game runs slowly for you, there are a wide variety of settings you can
adjust to make it faster.

Load up a game, and press the <F6> key to view the Settings window. 

Select 'Graphics'.

The easiest approach is to either:

  A.  Lower your video resolution.  We recommend 800 x 600, or even 640 x 480
for low end machines.

      or

  B. Lower visual detail.  Lower it one level at a time until you find a
setting you like.

If you want more control over the game's appearance, speed, and visual quality,
click on the '+' icon to the left of the 'Graphics' item, to expand your
options.  Try adjusting any of the individual settings to achieve a performance
level you're happy with.

Finally, as with any other game, we recommend you close any other open
applications before launching Railroad Tycoon 3.  This is particularly true if
your computer only has 128MB of RAM, as Railroad Tycoon 3 requires a full 128MB
of RAM for itself and the operating system, or performance will be slow with a
lot of swapping to hard drive.

 
Copyright 2003 Gathering. Railroad Tycoon 3, The Railroad Tycoon 3 logo, Pop
Top Software and the Pop Top logos are trademarks of Pop Top Software, Inc.
Gathering, the Gathering logo, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. and the A
Take-Two Company logo are trademarks of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. All
rights reserved. All other trademarks and copyrights are properties of their
respective owners. Made in the USA.